Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

by Jenny Lawson

The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy.

“Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives.

Readers Guide Inside

• ISBN10: 0425261018
• ISBN13: 9780425261019
• Publish Date: 5 March 2013 (first published 1 April 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Berkley Publishing Corporation,U.S.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 384
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780425261019

Reviews

[brokentune]

I think there’s a goat in our house,” my sister says, making no attempt to get up as she turns her head slightly to listen to the strange noises coming from down the hall. She’s wrong; I’m certain. Not because there couldn’t be a goat in the house, but because this isn’t our house anymore. It’s the home we grew up in, and still feels warm and familiar, but I’ve managed to disassociate myself from being responsible for shooing errant goats out of a home I haven’t lived in for more than a decade.

Another victim of the reading slump.

I like Jenny Lawson's blog posts - well, some more than others - but I got annoyed with the book. While her exaggerated style woks fine for me in short bursts, a whole book of it just drove me nuts.

I don't deal well with people who make everything into a drama and who need to talk about everything as if it needed amplification, and the narrative style in this book was all about the dramatic exaggeration.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

I’ll be honest, I had no clue who Jenny Lawson was when I attended her Out Loud! Author Event in my hometown in July. I was just instructed by a friend that I had to attend. So I did because I’m old and have nothing better to do on a Friday night.

During the event I fell in love with Jenny and her forward style of speaking. And I was happy to discover, as I read Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, that her speaking style matched her writing style.

I enjoyed the easy to read, lighthearted style of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. And while my childhood was not a crazy as Jenny’s, I was able to identify with her life living on the outskirts of town with a sister. (I know EXACTLY what a rendering plant smells like.)

Jenny’s memoir is a great non-fiction jumping off point for the reluctant non-fiction reader. Her writing is accessible and even in some the darker moments of her life, she is able to find the humor, making the memoir an uplifting read from start to finish.


This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews

[elvinagb]

Jenny is totally nuts, which in this case is is amazing as is this book. What a great read, I actually laughed out loud many times.

[Stephanie]

I listened to the audiobook version and it was amazingly awesome. Seriously, Jenny Lawson does so well narrating her own book. She made me laugh at inappropriate times and even brought tears to my eyes more than once. I also spent a great amount of time afterwards using great variations of the "f" word. :)